


The Sun and Moon of the Archives, From the Perspective of an Outsider

by elfentruthed



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Metaphors, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-10
Updated: 2020-01-10
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:48:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,152
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22195060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elfentruthed/pseuds/elfentruthed
Summary: An extended metaphor of the relationship between Jon, Martin, the Sun, and the Moon.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 4
Kudos: 20





	The Sun and Moon of the Archives, From the Perspective of an Outsider

When did you begin comparing him to the sun, Jon? When did you begin to look at his face and recall the life-giving warmth of that light?

Was it a wandering fancy of the mind, ignoring the responsibility of the statement calling out to you, dismissing the hunger in your being that grew and grew to the point of being unbearable? Was it a desperate attempt to fight it off a little longer, digging your feet like roots deep into the dirt and reaching out, reaching up, higher and higher, seeking out the brightest light of him that you could manage to reach, just to say _I can hold on a little longer, I can stay like this just a little longer, I can avoid that path for_ just _a little longer_? 

_My sun_ , you say to yourself, reveling in the secret nickname you have given him. _My warmth, my light, I can be human a little longer if you just come back to me_.

But he has not come back to you. He remains hidden behind the deepest, thickest fog you have ever seen in your life, somehow managing to cast you back into shadow as soon as you part the clouds to catch a glimpse of his brilliance. He appears determined to keep himself confined to an eternal twilight, dipped below the horizon, leaving behind a pink aura as a painful, teasing reminder of his recent presence that you only _just_ missed. _I can see him tomorrow_ , you tell yourself. _As with every day, he will return tomorrow_.

But you do not see him tomorrow. The world has cast your Eye to the west, to new, unknown prospects that send a chill of terror up your spine. You cannot see the sunrise in this way. You will never see the sunrise in this way.

And so he remains hidden in that cloudiness, and you are wilting beneath the overcast sky.

Have you ever considered the deeper implications of comparing him to the sun, Jonathan? Beyond your need of his light to give you strength, have you thought about how appropriate the metaphor _truly_ is? The resemblance is uncanny, truly. But not for the reasons you may think.

What is the sun, Jonathan? This isn’t a trick question, I promise you. The sun is nothing but a ball of gas, thousands of miles from where you sit in your cold archives now, burning itself away in nuclear reactions so powerful that one second of the sun’s raw power could fuel our entire civilization for a half million years. 

But only a fraction of that energy reaches us here, on this tiny speck of dirt that hosts our parasitic species. The earth sits in an unbelievably unlikely golden zone of distance from our star that is capable of sustaining life, maintaining a delicate dance of its orbit to never get so far as to freeze all life and never get so close as to burn it all up with the sheer force of the sun’s heat. One of the saddest things about the sun is the greatest product of its nature: light. Produced in its core, a photon will bounce and jump about within the sun’s body, shyly making its way to the surface, for four thousand years. And when the sun has finally helped this little photon out to the surface, offering the very essence of its own _being_ to us here on Earth, it is received and consumed in only eight _minutes_. Never to be seen again. The sun has given us so much, and never received anything in kind.

There is always some surface appreciation for the sun’s favors to us, the gifts it brings while asking nothing in return. Sometimes it even inspires religions, worshiping the being as a god for the life it brings. And yet there is always that footnote of caution. Do not fly too close, or you will burn. Do not look directly into its light, or you will go blind. Never expose yourself directly to its power, don’t accept its kindness with open arms; only reap the benefits.

If the sun were to disappear now, at this very moment, everything that surrounds it would scatter and die and freeze in the stillness of open space. If the sun were to burn itself out, it would explode in a stunning display of a supernova, destroying everything it worked so hard to sustain for billions of years. 

And yet we carry on, despite the overcast sky. The earth has not frozen nor been vaporized, so the sun must still be there behind the clouds, working away at its nuclear reactions as it has done since its birth, giving away a tiny fraction of itself with every passing moment to keep us here. Perhaps that is some comfort. To you, at least. I doubt it is very much comfort to him.

The sun doesn’t even have one of its kind nearby to keep it company. Not one individual that can withstand the true, unadulterated release of its warmth and light.

How terribly _lonely_ that must be.

And if he is the sun, what does that make you, Mr. Sims? In this fantasy metaphor brewing in your mind, you considered yourself akin to a plant, soaking up everything he had to offer you just to keep yourself grounded. But let’s not be so greedy, now. What do you offer to the earth? 

Perhaps you get to be my personal favorite celestial body. Perhaps you can be the moon.

Think about it. I find it quite appropriate. Your importance may be somewhat more mundane in this metaphor, but nonetheless necessary. You may not directly provide life, but you do keep death away, holding the ocean’s powerful tides at bay. You create no light of your own to provide to humanity, but you reflect a fraction of the best of what he has to offer, guiding the earth through the darkest of nights. 

Perhaps it is only a strange coincidence that the waxing phase of the moon resembles the opening of a great, bright eye in the sky?

Yet one side of you is always hidden from the world. He will almost always see you, always have you, but you flow in and out of the awareness of the world. But when the world dares to step between you and your sun, you are bathed in the red of blood before plunging yourself into complete and utter darkness. 

The world always steps away, and you always come back. But if you didn’t return, if earth maintained its position between you and your sun, leaving you in darkness, the world would carry on anyway. The world has never depended on the light of the moon.

So be cautious before you place yourself between the sun and the world, Archivist. For the same cannot be said about an eternal solar eclipse.


End file.
